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Friday, April 23, 2021
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the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Oregon OSHA’s ‘temporary’ permanent rulemaking
O
regon OSHA is working to make
permanent — “temporarily” —
the emergency COVID work-
place rules that it first put in place Nov.
16.
This rulemaking seems necessary
because of requirements in state law, to
continue pandemic safeguards that were
set to expire next month.
However, we are wary — as many are
— of “temporary” permanent rules that
are implemented without an expiration
date.
In the beginning of the pandemic it
was clear that something needed to be
done to protect people in the workplace
and the public at large. The job fell to
state agencies, including Oregon OSHA,
that felt their way through a situation
about which little was known but imme-
diate action was required.
The danger from
COVID-19 is real. Wear-
ing masks, maintaining
social distancing and tak-
ing steps to keep surfaces
clean are simple, com-
monsense precautions.
Michael
The rules that farms and
Wood
businesses must follow
are anything but simple,
and in many cases defy commonsense.
In November Oregon OSHA set out a
comprehensive temporary rule that gov-
erned behavior and safeguards in all Ore-
gon workplaces.
Oregon farms, already reeling from
earlier emergency orders, raced to comply
with state-imposed guidelines aimed at
curbing workplace outbreaks of COVID-
19. Complying with the requirements has
been a massive undertaking for small,
family-owned farms that may only have
a few full-time employees. Ninety-seven
percent of Oregon’s 37,200 farms are
family-owned and -operated.
Those temporary rules are set to expire
May 4. Under Oregon law, an emergency
rule can’t be extended longer than 180
days. And, a permanent rule is temporary
if it has a built-in expiration date.
OSHA says it can’t anticipate how
long the temporary permanent rules will
need to be in place, but it will amend or
abolish them as conditions warrant and
health officials give consent.
Michael Wood, administrator of the
state’s Department of Occupational
Safety and Health, told the Associated
Press that the workplace rule is “driven
by the pandemic, and it will be repealed.”
We are sure that it will be repealed.
Probably.
Our View
Dam breaching
proposal is a terrible idea
Santiam salvage logging
a good plan for Oregon M
T
he state of Oregon’s plan to salvage the
timber in a small part of the Santiam State
Forest is a win-win both for the people
who live and work there and for the people who
own it — the taxpayers.
The state Department of Forestry wants to
salvage the timber off 3,000 acres of the forest.
That’s about 19% of the portion of the forest that
was burned during the Beachie Creek, Lionshead
and Riverside fires last September and about 6%
of the forest as a whole.
Many who live in the area remember those
fires. Wind-driven blazes became blow torches
ripping through the canyons and over the ridges.
Before the fires were extinguished, hundreds of
houses had been destroyed and thousands of peo-
ple had been left homeless. Many are still living
in temporary quarters as they pick up the charred
remnants of their lives and livelihoods.
Comes now seven environmental groups that
want to stop any salvage logging in the state for-
est. They went to court in Multnomah County —
Portland — hoping to find a judge who will shut
down the operation.
Upon reading their complaint, the groups
acknowledge that “the vast majority of the burn-
ing occurred on tree plantations within the San-
tiam State Forest....”
Presumably, that means those trees were
intended to be harvested sooner or later. Now that
they have burned, the Department of Forestry
only wants to get some value out of them for the
taxpayers before they rot or otherwise become
worthless. It should also be noted that allowing
those trees to rot would release greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide.
It’s OK not like the timber industry. But to try
to impose that opinion on everyone all of the time
seems a bit, well, unrealistic.
As a society, we need timber. Nearly all houses
and apartments are built using at least some lum-
ber. Innovative building materials such as mass
plywood and cross laminated timber are just
a couple of new ways to construct houses and
buildings using this plentiful resource.
Better yet, trees are a renewable resource and
climate friendly. They absorb mass quantities of
carbon dioxide‚ a greenhouse gas — while they
grow, and then sequester it forever when they are
used to build houses and other structures.
No one is saying every square foot of Oregon
— or anywhere else, for that matter — should be
clear cut. Far from it.
All many people are saying is state and
national forests represent a perfect opportunity for
multiple use. Yes, recreation is one of those uses.
So is habitat. But so is timber production.
The state Department of Forestry got this one
right. The highest and best use of that burned state
forest is to salvage those trees, maintaining their
value, providing jobs for Oregonians and homes
for everyone, including environmentalists.
We want to hear from
Idaho women in agriculture
rowing up on a ranch filled me with wonder-
ful memories and a serious work ethic. But,
I was probably in elementary school when
my dad’s sister pulled me aside and told me to work
extra hard at school because the ranch would go to
my brother. She was telling me this because it was
her experience of the world and she wanted to pre-
pare me. It’s probably not surprising
that I worked hard at school and when GUEST
I decide to pursue a graduate degree, I VIEW
wanted to study women in agriculture.
For the last decade, I have spent the Ryanne
research portion of my job at the Uni- Pilgeram
versity of Idaho trying to understand
how to support women in agriculture
in this state. Much of that work has involved inter-
viewing women to understand both their triumphs
and challenges as they start farms, grow farms, or
inherit farms. But interviews can only answer some
kinds of questions. That’s why the research team
I lead is working to hear from as many women
involved in Idaho agriculture as we can through our
survey for Idaho farm and ranch women: tinyurl.
com/id-women-in-ag
I admired the women around me as a child: Jean-
nie, who would travel the state following farm work
in a tiny camper with only a dog for a companion.
She was a jack-of-all-trades who seemed to always
show up when you needed her most. My aunt came
back for the roundup. Her favorite story is me as a
tiny girl riding with her and egging her on, “faster
Aunt Shay, FASTER!”
And then there was my mom, she cooked three
meals a day for the hired men and also did all the
vet work. There didn’t seem to be an animal she
couldn’t save and one of my favorite pictures of her
is her performing a c-section on a cow in our barn-
yard. Both the cow and the calf lived.
With the support of a USDA/NIFA grant our
“Women Farmers and Ranchers on the Rise in
Idaho” team is working hard to collect and analyze
data so we can create a fuller, and likely more com-
plex, picture of women’s experiences on that land.
We started this process by analyzing the USDA
2017 Census of Agriculture. That exploration is
already yielding interesting results. For example,
G
we know women’s overall earnings through farm-
ing and ranching are far lower than men’s. This in
part because they are typically farming far fewer
acres — somewhere between one-half to two-thirds
fewer.
However, when we look at men and women
growing the same crops, women are
often making the same income per
acre as their male counterparts. This
means that even with a smaller produc-
tion scale, which should decrease earn-
ings per acre, women are on par per
acre with men. You can see more here:
https://www.cultivatingsuccess.org/
idaho-women-in-ag
Our team followed up the analysis of the census
with focus groups with women farmers and ranch-
ers across the state of Idaho, asking them to help us
contextualize our finds and discuss how they might
apply to Idaho. We were so grateful to the women
who shared their time, experience, and stories with
us.
Today, we are in our final phase of data collection
for the project, bringing together the question that
remains from our analysis of the census and com-
bining it with the context provided by Idaho farm
and ranch women during our focus group. Our
team has taken these elements and used them to
create a survey that examines the project’s remain-
ing questions. That’s where you or the women you
know who farm and ranch come in.
We are hoping our survey reaches as many
women farmers and ranchers in Idaho as we pos-
sibly can. Our ability to accurately describe the
experiences of women in agriculture in Idaho
depends on hearing from as many women as pos-
sible. We need your help to ensure the results are
as precise as possible. Please consider taking our
survey and sending it along to the farm and ranch
women in your life: tinyurl.com/id-women-in-ag
Ryanne Pilgeram, Ph.D., is an associate pro-
fessor in the Department of Sociology and Anthro-
pology at the University of Idaho. Her research
focuses on issues of inequality in the rural West
and works to imagine how we can create thriving
rural communities.
But when? What objective stan-
dard will the Oregon Health Author-
ity or OSHA use to judge that it’s time to
amend or repeal the rule?
Throughout the pandemic, the state has
refused to set transparent mileposts and
goals for pandemic improvement that the
public can monitor. These decisions are
made behind closed doors and without
explanation.
Our long experience in reporting on
rules and rulemaking has shown that once
a permanent rule is in place, it sticks like
glue. But we look forward to these rules
being the exception.
Until that time, all interested parties
should press Wood and other bureaucrats
to reveal what improvements need to take
place for the rule to be repealed.
ake no mistake about it,
a proposal by Rep. Mike
Simpson, R-Idaho, that
would result in the removal of the
four lower Snake River dams would
dramatically and negatively impact
Idaho agriculture and the entire state.
It would also result in higher
power costs for everyone in the
Pacific Northwest and forever alter, in
a bad way, the region’s way of life.
Idaho Farm Bureau Federa-
tion members — virtually everyone
involved in agriculture in the state for
that matter — were disheartened to
hear that a member of
the state’s congressio-
GUEST
nal delegation had cre-
ated a proposal that
VIEW
would result in those
Bryan
dams being breached.
Searle
Many people,
including myself, were
dismayed when they
first heard about Simpson’s $33.5 bil-
lion proposal, which seeks to improve
populations of endangered salmon by
removing the four hydroelectric dams.
Let me be very clear: Our oppo-
sition is not directed toward Repre-
sentative Simpson, who has accom-
plished some good things for Idaho
during his time in office.
Our opposition is squarely placed
on the congressman’s proposal, which
we believe would be bad for agri-
culture, bad for the environment and
bad for power rates, while holding no
guarantee that it would improve popu-
lations of endangered salmon.
Let me also be clear on this: Farm
Bureau supports improving salmon
populations.
IFBF policy, which was developed
by the organization’s members at the
grassroots level, supports several salm-
on-recovery alternatives, including pri-
vatizing salmon fisheries for stronger
fish; controlling predators of salmon,
regulating harvest of off-shore and
in-stream fish, and using new hydro-
electric turbine technologies to reduce
fish hazards.
But removal of the dams is a non-
starter for our organization, which
represents more than 80,000 mem-
ber-families in Idaho, including at
least 11,000 people who are actively
engaged in agriculture.
IFBF policy, which was devel-
oped by Farm Bureau members at the
grassroots level, supports “the con-
tinued existence and current usage of
all dams on the Columbia and Snake
Rivers” and opposes “any efforts to
destroy or decrease production of
those dams.”
The lower four dams on the Snake
River supply a significant amount of
cheap and environmentally friendly
hydroelectric power to the region.
They are also a critical part of a sys-
tem on the Columbia and Snake rivers
that allows wheat farmers, as well as
producers of many other commodities,
to export their product to the world.
The river, combined with its sys-
tem of dams and locks, provides for
the environmentally friendly ability to
transport wheat, pulse and other crops
to Portland by barge so they can be
shipped across the world.
Removing the dams would make
the Columbia-Snake River system
unnavigable for barges that move
wheat, barley and other products to
Portland for export.
Removing the dams would have a
devastating impact on Idaho’s wheat
farmers, who grow that crop in 42 of
the state’s 44 counties. Idaho wheat
growers brought in $525 million in
farm-gate receipts in 2020 and wheat is
the state’s No. 2 crop in that category.
Almost half of the wheat grown
in Idaho is moved by barge down
the Columbia-Snake River system to
Portland.
Barging is the most cost-effective
and environmentally friendly way of
getting wheat from Idaho to market
and the Columbia-Snake system is the
third largest grain export gateway in
the world.
According to a study commis-
sioned by the Pacific Northwest Water-
ways Association, a nonprofit group
that represents a diverse coalition of
135 groups in Idaho, Washington and
Oregon, removing the
dams would signifi-
cantly increase die-
sel fuel consumption
because barges would
be replaced by less
efficient truck and rail
shipment.
The study found that
shifting transportation of commodi-
ties from barges to truck and rail would
increase carbon and other emissions
by more than 1.3 million tons per year.
That’s the same as adding 181,889 pas-
senger cars or 90,365 homes.
According to the PNWA study,
it would take about 35,000 rail cars
or 135,000 semi-trucks to move all
the cargo that is barged on the Snake
River.
People in Idaho and the PNW
enjoy some of the very cheapest
power rates in the nation because
of the electricity produced by those
four dams and others on the Colum-
bia-Snake system.
Removing those hydroelectric
dams would result in power rates in
the region increasing dramatically.
So, removing the dams would not
only be bad for agriculture and bad for
power rates, it would also be bad for
the environment.
Simpson’s proposal would cre-
ate a $33.5 billion “Columbia Basin
Fund” to help transition economies and
sectors negatively impacted by dam
removal.
The plan attempts to place a price
tag on our way of life in Idaho and the
Pacific Northwest and it also attempts
to compensate sectors, such as agri-
culture, that will be impacted by dam
removal.
We believe attempting to place a
price tag on our way of life is not pos-
sible, nor proper, and besides, farm-
ers would rather make their living from
the market and not be “compensated”
by the government.
IFBF members believe that the con-
gressman’s proposal would have a
major negative impact on the region’s
economy and way of life, while mak-
ing no assurances that salmon popula-
tions would improve.
We’re not the only ones. The list
of people and groups opposed to the
plan is growing seemingly by the day.
Every other member of Idaho’s con-
gressional delegation, as well as our
governor, is on record since the pro-
posal came out as opposing dam
breaching.
In addition, groups represent-
ing agriculture and other industries in
Idaho have come out in opposition to
the plan, as have lots of county com-
missioners and other elected officials.
A Senate Joint Memorial opposing
dam breaching is sailing through the
Idaho Legislature.
We sincerely hope Congressman
Simpson hears Idahoans’ collective
thinking on his proposal and reconsid-
ers and scraps it, for the benefit of the
entire state.
Bryan Searle is president of the
Idaho Farm Bureau Federation.